America’s Lawyer E75: President Biden’s poll numbers continue to get worse, and his rivals in the presidential race are hoping to capitalize on this as we enter the new year in a few weeks. Lawmakers are increasing their calls to ban the social media app TikTok in the United States, and the app isn’t doing itself any favors by increasing their censorship of vital news stories. And prescriptions for the popular diabetes drug Ozempic are so out of control that insurance companies are warning doctors to stop giving the drug to people who are trying to lose weight. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Hi, I’m Mike Papantonio, and this is America’s Lawyer. President Biden’s poll numbers continue to get worse, and his rivals in the presidential race are hoping to capitalize on that. And we’re in for a fight coming up in 2024. I can promise you. Lawmakers are increasing their calls to ban the social media app TikTok in the United States, and the app isn’t doing itself any favors by increasing their censorship of almost everything. And prescriptions for the popular diabetes drug Ozempic, well, they’re so outta control that companies are warning doctors to stop giving the drug to people who are trying to lose weight because it’s causing such serious health problems that the insurance company has to end up paying for. All that and more. It’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Multiple new polls from the past week show that President Biden’s going to have a hard time keeping his job next year, barring some kind of miracle. The problem is that voters actually like his agenda. That’s what’s weird about it. But they don’t like him. There’s not much this administration can do about it. They’re fighting. They have the wrong talking heads out. They have the wrong people delivering the message. The message of what he’s accomplished is not out there and that’s a shame. I have Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me now, the best, absolutely the best commentator in social media, across the board, on progressive issues. I really do believe that. Okay. So, every time we talk about polls, you can’t believe polls. Why do you talk about polls? You’re idiots. Stop doing it. You’re hurting the Democrats. As if we’re on some kind of agenda for the Democrats or the Republicans. Sorry, gang. We’re not. Talk to me about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. We did have several polls, a CNN poll, a New York Times/Siena poll come out last week that basically said, listen, as it stands right now, president Biden is getting crushed in five outta six swing states that he had carried in 2020. So if that trend continues based on the current polling data, there is no viable path to reelection for President Biden. But at the same time, those polls show us, listen, the things he’s done, people like them, they like the lowering of the prescription drug costs. The real criticism is that some of them have not gone far enough. But in terms of has he accomplished things? Yes, he has. And he’s done some pretty good things.
Mike Papantonio: He has, and you know what, the ostriches out there, the ostrich followers who can’t stand that we say anything hopefully constructive to say, hey, pay attention to this. The ostrich folks are gonna say, well, you can’t believe polls. Look at the last time we went into polls. Look how wrong they are. Okay. They are wrong sometimes. But here all you’re saying, isn’t it, is it’s an indicator?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Something’s wrong. They have the wrong people out there speaking. They for some reason don’t like Biden. They don’t like looking. I don’t know what it is. They, when you hear creepy a lot, with that ice cream cone standing there, and I don’t know what it is, but there’s something that, it’s out there that you can’t put your finger on, but you know it’s there. And that’s what the Democratic advisors are concerned about. It’s not just his age, you know? Do you agree with that?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And listen, the polls are gonna change a hundred times.
Mike Papantonio: Of course they are.
Farron Cousins: Between now and next year’s election. So, yeah, we’re not putting, you and I already talked, we don’t put too much stock into what this poll says. The poll that matters though, is the one that says, hey, his unfavorability rating is pretty much equal with Donald Trump.
Mike Papantonio: 57 to 58. Donald Trump is 58% unfavorable. He’s 57. He’s president of the frigging United States, has been in office going on four years. And he’s done some good things. He really has done some good things. But here’s what makes me the angriest, I think. The people he surrounded himself with, they don’t get the criticism. Okay. The Susan Rice types, they don’t get this criticism when he makes these policy decisions, he gets all the criticism. The people he’s sending out there to show up and talk about his policies are terrible. Moreover, the only place they show up is MSNBC, maybe a little bit on CNN. Well, look at the entire viewing audience is what, 3 million on a good day?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. On a great day.
Mike Papantonio: On a great day, it’s 3 million. So you have the progressives thinking, oh man, this is great because talking head came in and talking head said what I wanted to hear, but talking head is not delivering the message to the American public. They don’t know what he’s accomplished. They have no clue. They think he’s creepy. It’s not just the age thing. There’s more to this puzzle.
Farron Cousins: Well, and you bring up a good point. He needs better people out there talking for him to the audience that are not already being spoken to. It’d be great if we could have a Bernie Sanders go out there and say, hey, listen, everybody shut up and listen to me talk. Here’s some good things that have happened over the last three years. And Bernie Sanders is a good person. He’s very likable. He’s a good person to sell that message. I think Elizabeth Warren would be wonderful selling the message.
Mike Papantonio: You know Bernie Sanders message, don’t you? You can give me 10 points on his message. Elizabeth Warren, you could give me 10 points on her message. The average American cannot give you three points about what he’s accomplished. And he’s accomplished some good stuff on infrastructure. You know, at least a little bit, a tiny, tiny bit of pushback from the pharmacy industry. Labor, he’s been, most of the time good for labor. He’s screwed up a fair amount. But overall, you say, what has he accomplished? He’s accomplished something. But they just can’t get the message out. They got the wrong talking heads. I don’t know where they’re finding these people, but they’re terrible. And the average person watching this show, all they’re watching is MSNBC. Maybe they’re watching a little CNN. So they think that message is out there, it’s not.
Farron Cousins: Right. And we had talked when he first came into office and starts putting his people in place, we talked then, I’m pretty sure we did a segment back then about how bad all the advisors were.
Mike Papantonio: We’ve done it three times, Farron.
Farron Cousins: That he was surrounding himself with. Yeah. And so when you take, because what he did, just so everybody understands, he took people that have been in Washington, DC for as long as he’s been in Washington, DC. You get all these insiders who think they know the political talking points. No, we know what to say. We know how to sell this. We’ve been around for 30 years. You have to trust us. And he did. And it’s not helping. You need to bring in.
Mike Papantonio: These are the old Hillary advisors.
Farron Cousins:: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: The same old crew that shows up all the time, no matter how many elections they lose, those are the people advising him right now. The other part of it, and this article’s pretty good about talking about is these little paper cuts. Now you think there’s nothing whatsoever about the Hunter Biden thing. You’ve done several shows. You think it’s just a nothing burger. That’s not what the American public thinks. Okay. Now, and the point is, you have the ability to go in there and study it and see, this is real. This isn’t real. The American public doesn’t do that. Okay. They listen to Fox News, Fox delivers it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they get they’re talking points from that.
Farron Cousins: And Fox has on the committee members from the committee saying, we’re gonna get ’em. So that’s how effective they are. Democrats aren’t doing that.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, the Democrats. Okay. So there’s that story. The DuPont story is just coming up. I gotta promise you watch this story. This is where we’ve talked about where did he get all the money to buy the mansions and three houses, that kinda stuff. Well, how did he get the DuPont mansion? How did he buy it? His combined income, both he and his wife during that period was about $350,000. This thing is a multimillion dollar home. And so that story is emerging right now. So it’s these little paper cuts add to that, that whatever he’s projecting ain’t working. And you see what real Democratic leadership is concerned about. Now, it may not be the ostriches that are concerned about it, but real Democratic leadership is worried about it.
Farron Cousins: Right. And he looks old, right? He looks a little feeble. He doesn’t speak as quickly as he used to, and he doesn’t speak as loud as he used to. So what he needs to do to cover for that is surround himself by strong, energetic people.
Mike Papantonio: Of course.
Farron Cousins:: Who sell the message. So voters say, okay, he may have lost a step, but look at these people around him. They know what they’re talking about, and I trust them.
Mike Papantonio: You know where the 21 to 39 people are going to?
Farron Cousins: I do.
Mike Papantonio: Bobby Kennedy.
Farron Cousins:: They are.
Mike Papantonio: Right. He’s losing them by the droves. I mean, the other day they had this film where he’s some award and he’s doing his robot walk, and he literally doesn’t know where he is. So he’s turning around. He walks the other way, then he walks the other way again. And they have to tell him where to go. Those are the paper cuts that everybody wants to ignore. You know? Can he beat Trump? Yeah, he can. I mean, how can you not beat a criminal? How does that happen? Could happen here.
TikTok has become one of the most popular social media apps in the country. But it may also present the biggest danger to young people. The app has now started censoring vital news stories. And I gotta tell you something. These are important stories. I let me tell you this story. You were involved with this story. We did a story on the fact that probiotics that were given to preemie babies were killing the children with a terrible, terrible process called NEC. Right? NEC, what it does, it dries out the entire gastrointestinal system. And how bad is the injury?
Farron Cousins: It’s fatal. It’s so bad and we talked about this when we did the segment, the nurses say they have nightmares. Some of them have quit their jobs entirely because of the screams of these infants. And the only way to stop it is to effectively put the infant in a coma so that they can’t scream.
Mike Papantonio: We do the story after the FDA warns ’em about that. It’s not just us. We have, here’s the FDA said this. We do the story, we put it on TikTok. What happens? The companies who make the probiotics put pressure on TikTok, and we’re taken down for, what is it? Community, whatever it is.
Farron Cousins:: Yeah. Community guideline violation. Misinformation.
Mike Papantonio: Misinformation. Not a bit of misinformation. The information came right from the FDA for God’s sakes. And so, this has become an unworkable. If you have TikTok, get the hell rid of it. I mean, really. You’ve got a lot better sources. It’s become this thing where it’s all these almost these moronic sophomoric videos of let me show you what I did last weekend. Or they appeal to the teenager with the frontal new thing. It’s just not even a workable site. And what’s happening is governments all around the world are saying, enough China, enough Beijing. But they’re saying it for a different reason. Not just because it’s a poor quality, not just because of the censorship is outrageous. The censorship is outta control. But why?
Farron Cousins: Because they believe that obviously this is a way for the Chinese government to get your data. And not just for, okay, we’re gonna spam their data, take their information. It’s a great tracking device and that’s what people always forget. When you have this app open and you are walking down the street, or you’re filming in a public space, it sends information not just about you, but about every other device nearby. It picks up on all of these things, and it’s sending it to whoever is the highest bidder at that point. And that is, of course, exceptionally dangerous. Which is why government officials, the federal government, state governments across the country, they’ve banned it completely. Because, hey, we don’t want this other country to be able to say, okay, look at this. We got representative John Smith is sitting at a Dunking Donuts right now and that’s dangerous.
Mike Papantonio: And some other folks that we’re following are sitting there with him. What does that mean? So the security issue is bad enough. You know, Montana outta there, they said, no more. You’re out of there. New York City, you can’t use it in any kind of government kind of setting. But it’s picking up speed even there to even be broader than that.
Farron Cousins: India.
Mike Papantonio: India.
Farron Cousins: Totally.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, how the hell? India says, no, this thing’s so bad, we’re not gonna allow our population to even look at it. But we ignore it because it’s mindless, stupid entertainment. Right. You know, here, oh, look at this guy jumping off a cliff without a parachute. Wow. That’s entertaining. So the point being, TikTok is in trouble right now. TikTok is a piece of you know what. It really is. Compared to all the other sites, it’s a useless piece of that.
Farron Cousins: And it showed a lot of promise. We’ve talked about how just a few months ago it was doing great. It was a way to get out vital information, but something has changed in it and it’s not with us. We’re seeing other groups, other organizations.
Mike Papantonio: No, it’s not just us.
Farron Cousins:: Mass reporting these like, hey, why is my story getting pulled?
Mike Papantonio: Let’s make a proclamation. Let’s post this one on TikTok. Let ’em take it down. And then we’re through. Okay. What do we have 300,000? And we haven’t been on there long, what, four months? I’m through with ’em. We’re gonna take ours down. And anybody with half a brain should see what’s happening with TikTok. It’s a dangerous, dangerous little element to American society right now. And there’s some great sites. I mean, you can’t say that about Instagram. Instagram, you can actually have discussions. They’re intelligent. It’s entertaining. They have comedy section. They follow foot. There’s a lot of things about it that’s different about TikTok. And people just need to make the decision. This is really a dangerous little entity. And just do what we’re proclaiming right now. Let’s go off.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I’m fine with that.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, seriously, let’s go off.
Drug companies have been scamming the patent system for decades in order to keep lower cost generic drugs off the market and the Biden administration has announced that they’re going to be cracking down on these abuses. Okay. Here we go. I gotta tell you something. This is a big accomplishment for the Biden administration.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: This is a very important story. This is what this administration, this is the kind of thing this administration should have been doing for years. And maybe they were, but I didn’t know about it because the people handling his talking points are so terrible. This is a great thing that Biden is doing right here. Talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What’s happening is that the Federal Trade Commission has realized we’ve got pharmaceutical companies that keep every 30 months putting in new patents for their drugs, which when they do that gives them a 30 month stay on any generics making it to the market. So they said, well, let’s look at what these new patents. Are they really making this many changes to the drug? And it turns out, no, they’re not. What these drug companies are doing is they’ll take something like an asthma inhaler, which they don’t change the active ingredient, the albuterol, but what they do is they say, you know what? We’re gonna put a new cap on it. We’re gonna take away the little flap cap. We’re gonna change the plastic on it to a different material. Refile the patent, even though the drug didn’t change. And now we got another three years before a generic can come out there.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Well, they just beat the generic down. It’s like Sara Papantonio’s handling that case about Suboxone. Well, that’s what they did. They just said, well, let’s put it in a film rather than a pill. It’s the same thing. They beat, beat, beat down any possibility of generics. Any possibility of real progression. You know, having done work against the pharmaceutical industry, it sounds like a bold statement, but I’m about to make it, when I compare the weapons industry and when I compare even the banking industry to the corruption that I see day in and day out at the pharmaceutical industry, it’s not even close. Not even close. These people don’t think anything about killing 150 people a day like we saw with opioids and saying, well, this is good money, so I’m gonna keep it up. I’ve seen situations where they’ve phonied up clinical data, completely phonied it up, changed decimal points. I’ve seen where they’ve paid off investigators. They’ve paid off regulatory people. They’ve hired regulatory people so those regulatory people don’t give them any kind of pressure. They’ve put billions of dollars into political races. It is the most corrupt entity, and I’ve worked against the weapons industry, I’ve worked against the ugly banks, the Wall Street banks. I hate to say it because I don’t like any of them but the pharmaceutical industry is the worst. Absolutely.
Farron Cousins: They are. And it’s great to see the Biden administration coming out and saying, listen, we’re gonna take you to task for this.
Mike Papantonio: I love it, man.
Farron Cousins:We’re gonna rip your patents out if we have to do it. And again, where else have you seen this story? This was reported on Common Dreams, which is.
Mike Papantonio:: Okay. So there you go. Okay. This is, people watching this get it immediately. Good job, Biden. You did a good job. Now get the story out there. Just like Biden on infrastructure. Good job, Joe. You did a great job. Just like the deal on pushback on Medicare. Nice job. Just like labor that he’s accomplished. Good job. He has nobody, nobody to deliver that story. And the people watching this show right now believe, well, I saw it in on MSNBC, so what? What two, 3 million people saw it?
Farron Cousins: Well, MSNBC won’t even cover this.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: Because these are their advertisers.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, exactly. These, that’s exactly right. If anybody tried to go on the story and do this story, they’d be interrupted just like I was so many times when I did MSNBC.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: The state of Florida is considering new legislation that would ease child labor laws in the state and a new reports revealed that this legislation was written by a right wing think tank that’s been pushing these changes for a long time. Well, it’s not just a think tank. It’s paid for by billionaires, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio: We are run, if you could visualize the United States as a chess board, what you have is you have these billionaires making all decisions. On one side, you got Soros, right. Soros is the so-called Progressive that, oh, by the way, was run out of Hungary because of some issues that he had. But then you have, on the right side, you’ve got this guy, right? Talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. A guy named Dick Uihlein, who started the company Uihlein and billionaire based out of Florida now. And he is funding this group, they’re called the Foundation for Government Accountability, which sounds great, right? Oh, everybody wants government accountability. But what they do is a lot like what ALEC does, they ghost write legislation. They go and shop it around to whatever kind of friendly lawmaker they can find in that state. They finally find somebody dumb enough to just take the legislation that they wrote. Put their name on it.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, they don’t even change a comma.
Farron Cousins: Right. Then file it as new legislation.
Mike Papantonio: So Dick or Soros, it’s both. It’s both of ’em. I’m saying we are like in the midst of this billionaire chess board where Soros, he wants to change the American justice system. So he spends a gazillion dollars getting the right prosecutors in place, or whatever it may be. Uihlein on the other side hates labor. So he attacks everything that’s labor with a billion dollars. Here’s the point. Almost 15% of the total contributions that go to politics come from these billionaires. Now that’s an impressive number. And so they’re able to accomplish whatever the hell they want to accomplish. They just exploit the American public into believing, oh, Soros is our savior because he talks like a progressive or Uihlein is our savior because he talks like a right winger. These people, they could not care less about how this affects us. They want their political agenda from beginning to end and they spend billions doing it. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And what we’re seeing right now happen in Florida with what Uihlein and his group have done, they’ve put forward new legislation that’s identical to about, I think 16 other states have done this too, loosening child labor laws. They basically say if you’re 16, 17 years old, you can work in industries where, hey, you’re probably gonna lose a finger or two, but you’ll be fine. You can work eight hours, you can work an overnight shift, even when you have school at 7:00 AM the next morning. And these laws were put in place to protect these young people so that they could get an education. But these billionaires want these laws destroyed because you don’t have to pay people under 18 the same kind of minimum wage. You don’t have to give them any benefits. There’s no health insurance, there’s no pension, nothing.
Mike Papantonio: Moreover, they lose an arm, ship ’em back to Venezuela. No problem. They’re on the next plane back.
Farron Cousins: And you got a steady supply of labor with every high school nearby.
Mike Papantonio: And you hear, for example, Soros, well, both these guys. Soros, yeah, we want as much immigration as possible. Why does he want that? Look at the companies that he owns. Look at the industry that he’s involved with. They want cheap labor working, this is nothing, this is not benevolent. Soros is out there, oh, this is a benevolent thing. Soros is just an extension of the US Chamber of Commerce. That’s all it is. So is this Uihlein guy. So we all think, well, these guys want this because they’re so big hearted. No, they want it because rather than having to go out of the country to hire cheap labor, they’re bringing the cheap labor in. And you know what, like I said, you lose an arm, little Joe, I know you’re 16 years old, you shouldn’t be working around this machine. We’re gonna ship you back to Venezuela. That’s exactly how this works.
A fire at a chemical plant in Texas last week occurred on the same day that a new report was released showing how common incidents like this occur all the time. The report says that the chemical or fossil fuel plant fires and explosions are happening at a rate of nearly one every day. Pick this story up. This is an outrageous story.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. We had this massive.
Mike Papantonio: How many times have we done this story? Something blowing up and killing a dozen people.
Farron Cousins: Right. And usually in Texas, honestly, it’s probably one of the oldest stories we’ve been doing here at Ring of Fire.
Mike Papantonio: In Texas. Yeah. Texas is the home of explosions. Right.
Farron Cousins: So last week we have this massive explosion slash fire at a chemical plant to the point where the residents in the city were told, don’t leave your house. There is a shelter in place. Do not walk outside. Do not open your windows because of the toxic fumes coming from this facility here. And so far now, 287 as of us talking right here, by the end of the day it’s gonna be higher than that, 287 of these fires or explosions at chemical plants and fossil fuel plants just this year. So yes, we are averaging one a day. People are dying in these explosions every single day.
Mike Papantonio: It’s so common, Farron, that they’re actually attorney firms and attorney groups, this is all they do. This is such, and you know where most of it is, is in taxes, as you point out. But, okay, so the question then becomes, well, don’t regulators take care of this? Well, what do we see with BP? Alright, BP, we handled that case. In the case we found out that the regulators were being invited to parties with coke, prostitutes. It just went on forever what was happening with the regulators. So they said to BP, you know what, we’re gonna let you get away with what we think is a real danger. Which ended up blowing up and destroyed an entire ecosystem. So we think the regulators are there to help. They’re not. They’re just, all they’re looking for is the next job, Farron. Just like BP. These guys went to work for the fossil fuel industry after they left the regulators.
Farron Cousins: Well, and one of the things too, while you bring up BP is the regulators were so captured by that company and Transocean, that they actually, Transocean would fill out their own inspection reports. Their federal inspection reports.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, and they’d sign off on it.
Farron Cousins: The inspector would get it would say, okay, let me go over it and pen because they’d write it in pencil and just copy exactly what they had written. And based on what we see, there is no way regulators are actually inspecting these plants when we have an explosion every day.
Mike Papantonio: You would think, oh, well, that’s hyperbole talking about the coke and the prostitution part. It’s not.
Farron Cousins: No, it’s not.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, we got in depositions. They had to talk about this in deposition and these were key regulators. So the point is, if you think that the problem in Texas is gonna be cured by regulators, it’s never gonna be cured by regulators.
Prescriptions for the diabetes drug Ozempic have grown so out of control that the insurance companies are telling doctors stop prescribing. Now, can you imagine the insurance company that understands that they have to pay for all the physical injuries that these women are receiving, they’re so concerned that they’re demanding that doctors stop doing this. Now with doctors it’s a cash cow, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It is. It is so disappointing to see this story, to be honest with you, because this shows that even an industry as corrupt as the insurance industry, and it is right up there, it is a bad industry. But they’re looking at this saying, we are about to be in a world of hurt guys. You thought you had the holy grail, you can call it a gold rush, whatever you want to call it. We see the warning signs because we’re the same folks that were covering those prescriptions for Fen-phen. We still have that fresh in our minds.
Mike Papantonio: I was just gonna say.
Farron Cousins:: We’re not gonna go through this again with you guys.
Mike Papantonio: In the Fen-phen cases that we handled, we had the insurance companies early on saying, what’s going on here? Well, we told ’em what was going on. People are dying by the hundreds of a terrible disease, related cardiovascular disease, that killed women in a slow, awful death. Okay. So they did the same thing. They said, stop doing it. Now, we have already been on this show, and I just want to give you the playbook. The doctors who are prescribing this, alright, they’re gonna be brought into the lawsuits that are gonna be brought against Ozempic. Here’s why. There’s jurisdictional issues. I want, for example, I want my case to take place in Alabama. I don’t want to be in federal court. So what I’m playing is a diversity game. I’m not gonna just sue the Ozempic manufacturers. I’m gonna bring the doctor in too so I can stay in state court. So I’m gonna sue the doctor because the doctor’s clearly on notice of how dangerous it is. They’re like in a frenzy now. Just the same thing we saw with opioids. If a doctor is prescribing this right now and a woman ends up getting really sick, which they’re doing all day long every day, then they’re committing malpractice. So it just gives, the doctor doesn’t understand. They may be doing well making money on the facility, whatever the weight loss facility, they may think, well, we’re doing really well right now. They’re not gonna do well when they have to go to court. These cases, chicken’s gonna come home to roost here.
Farron Cousins: Absolutely. Look, I actually just finished writing a pretty big piece on Ozempic and what we’ve seen so far from them. And I spent a lot of time comparing it to the Fen-phen days. So what’s happening right now, obviously, and we talked about this, we’ve talked about it with Cameron Stephenson, is we’re seeing stomach paralysis. It’s still in the early phases. We’re still looking into things. But the doctors, to me, that’s the biggest part of this because the insurance companies are telling them, listen, this is a diabetes drug. This is not a weight loss drug. So what you are doing, doctors, is you’re telling these women who come in who show no signs of diabetes, like, hey, I know you wanna lose a little weight here.
Mike Papantonio: Take it for a couple of months, you know, shoot up for a couple months.
Farron Cousins: Do this. You’ll lose 30, 40 pounds. It’s a great thing.
Mike Papantonio: Here’s the, let me give you another side of the ugly story. In Fen-phen, women were dying by the hundreds. Okay. And even with that, there were still women, even when the product could not be found, taken off the market, women would still search it out. Would say, it’s so important that I lose weight. Rather than pushing yourself away from the table, said, I had enough calories today. Let me go exercise some. Rather than doing that, they would seek out a drug that was off the market and they would try to do black market. Women were actually taking Fen-phen after it was very clear of how dangerous. I think the first trial had actually taken, it was getting ready to take place. And the truth is, it’s the doctors are taking that truth, that reality, and they’re taking advantage of it. And when I say doctors, I’m talking about these clinics. That’s where you really see it. Just a, you would think doctors follow this kind of stuff, but they don’t. They have some little perky, what they call ’em, detailer come in with cupcakes, doctor happy birthday, and they sell a gazillion pills for little Susie. Right. The detail process. So the doctors don’t really keep up with the clinical data. They don’t really keep up. And that sounds unbelievable. Some of ’em do. The good ones do. But these clinics are providing such an opportunity for the lawyers that are bringing these cases all over the country because they’re gonna sue the clinic so they can stay in state court to avoid having to go to federal court.
Farron Cousins: And another thing too that we see here is Ozempic, of course, in their very catchy commercials with their little jingle, they’re now specifically mentioning you can lose weight on this product. And once they say that in the commercial.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, it’s all over.
Farron Cousins: It burns into people’s brains. So they say, hey doc, look, I got the holidays are coming up. I’m gonna put on a little weight. Why don’t you go ahead and put me on it now. And the doctors are blindly telling most of these people. Okay, sure.
Mike Papantonio: What about, hey, push yourself away from the table, go get some exercise and do what’s right. But here it’s, and again, the remarkable thing is when women start seeing other women suffer badly with this, it’s not gonna make any difference. They’re gonna say, I’m not gonna have that problem. I’m gonna take it any way. Weight loss is more important than my overall health. Farron Cousins, thank you for joining me.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: Lawsuits are being filed against the makers of the drug Suboxone, claiming the patient suffered dental issues after taking the drug. And you know what? The problem continues. Sara, I gotta tell you, this is just another one of those stories where there’s this big money grab. Okay. You were involved in handling part of the opioid crisis, as you know, I kind of headed part of that up. We saw people dying at 150 a day from opioid addiction. So drug company then says, okay, we’ve got the pharmaceutical industry has addicted all these people. Now let’s come up with something that’s gonna get ’em off of this drug if they live at all. So here you got a product that’s causing havoc. Everything from dental loss that’s very serious, tongue disformation. It’s a problem that we’re faced with again, it’s pharmacy at it again, pharmaceuticals at it again. Right?
Sara Papantonio: Right. We have a company yet again, taking advantage of the people who have just truly been through the ringer. People who were addicted to opioid drugs and were never told that that product was addictive. Right. And now when they’re taking steps to correct that addiction, when they’re taking steps to get their life back and using a drug called Suboxone, what we’re finding is that they have an increased risk of severe dental disorders, dental decay, cavities.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. You’re gonna be taking depositions in this case and I have some predictions. When you take depositions from the clinicians, you’re gonna find they phonied up clinical data. We see it all the time with these kinds of cases. The FDA, we think FDA is there to look after us, but they don’t have the time to look after us. Give us the 10,000 foot of what the case is about generally.
Sara Papantonio: So what we have is Suboxone. Suboxone is a drug used to treat opioid addiction. And it comes in two forms. It comes in a pill form or a film form, meaning that we put that inside of our mouth or under our tongue and it dissolves. And that ultimately reduces the cravings that you would get from opioid addiction. Right. What’s happening is that film is incredibly acidic in the mouth. So it’s causing extensive tooth decay. People are losing entire halves of their mouth in terms of teeth.
Mike Papantonio: Like meth. Just like a meth user might. I mean, anybody using meth, their teeth just disappear basically.
Sara Papantonio: Right. Their mouths are rotting from the inside out. And the problem here is that we’ve got a company that has been aware of that issue for a long time.
Mike Papantonio: How aware?
Sara Papantonio: And so here’s where the story is, and this is what makes it just so awful from a pharmaceutical standpoint, is Indivior is the company that manufactures the Suboxone film. In about 2009 Indivior’s patent was about to run up for the tablet form, meaning that they would have to open their brand up to generic use and everyone would come flooding into the market. They said, hold on, we don’t want anyone to enter our space. We like the money we’re making, we like how this is going for us. So they changed the nature of that drug to a film version. And that’s when all of these problems started.
Mike Papantonio: Same product, same issues, same damage to the mouth. They just put in the film and the film goes just under the tongue you say, or up in the cheek?
Sara Papantonio: On the side of the mouth. And that’s what’s causing all this.
Mike Papantonio: So we’re not just talking about minor, we’re not talking about minor tooth decay, we’re talking about tooth fractures, oral surgeries that have to take place. Tongue injuries, gum injuries that are very serious. And the problem is, most of these lead to other health problems. They leave to sepia, they leave to a whole host of other health problems. So what’s your plan on this case? I know you’re gonna be heading up with some other folks. What’s the plan on handling this?
Sara Papantonio: So the plan is to pursue litigation against the company who manufactures this, Indivior. And the good news is, is that people have already taken steps against Indivior. They’ve been criminally fined by the DOJ, which as you know, as we’ve talked about, does not happen here.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Impossible to begin with.
Sara Papantonio: The CEO pled guilty here. So this is, I mean, there’s a lot of momentum behind this in addition to those antitrust lawsuits that I was talking about related to the patent. So you’re seeing a lot of litigation being filed against this company and the next step is for us to represent the actual individuals harmed by this.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I think people watching this don’t understand how significant that is to have the Department of Justice actually do something when criminal activity takes place. Look, 150 people a day died on opioids, right? Not one of the CEOs was prosecuted. Nobody prosecuted. And so here, when the DOJ said, well, God, I guess we gotta do something, it’s gotta be serious. Those depositions are gonna be a lot of fun, I predict. The FDA, talk about their fines. Didn’t they have fines in addition to this? How much?
Sara Papantonio: So it’s the DOJ fines and then the antitrust litigation that’s happening. So you had the DOJ come in and say, you’re actually falsely misrepresenting your product. And they, Indivior pled guilty for felony counts and the CEO pled guilty.
Mike Papantonio: Unheard of.
Sara Papantonio: Which does not happen. So that just cues us into, there’s a really, really awful liability story that I think is gonna come out of this case.
Mike Papantonio: I think you’re gonna have a lot of fun with this case. Go after ’em as hard as you can. But people are gonna listen to this and they’re gonna think, well, these are minor injuries. No, it’s not a minor injury. When you have four of your molars, you have four teeth fall out on one side, it causes the entire function of all the teeth on the other side to become dysfunctional. And the surgery that has to take place with implants, putting teeth back in. This is serious stuff. I mean, a typical case like this, you may have 120, $150,000 in damages on one of these serious cases.
Sara Papantonio:: We expect the injuries to be very severe here. And from a diagnosing perspective, exactly where that film is going is where people are having the extensive tooth loss. And so that is good from what we call a specific causation standpoint when we go to court, is because you can’t argue that the place you put the film is the place you have the tooth decay and the tooth loss here. And so that is significant. Right. And you have to understand it from the position of these are people whose lives have basically fallen apart and they’re trying to pick up the pieces and now their teeth are falling out. Can you imagine?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. In other words, they’re going to these clinics, they’re saying, I was hooked on opioids. Here’s the problem with opioids. It’s not like an alcohol problem where you can go into a Betty Ford Center and come out. The opioid effects the dopamine level so severely in the brain that it’s a three year process. So these folks that say, well, I’m just gonna go to rehab and be, no, it’s a three year process. So this is something that they use during that three year period of time. Can they make a safer product? Of course they can. Are there alternatives? Of course.
Sara Papantonio: And that’s what’s so important here is I don’t want it to come out as these people are just trying to seek solutions and we’re just trying to negate those solutions. That’s absolutely not the case here. There are so many safer ways to get this types of treatment. There are dermal patches, there are injections, there are different pills. So lack of safer alternatives is not an option here. We are targeting the film only. That is the dangerous product.
Mike Papantonio: So, Sara, what happens is these facilities, they get started on something. Okay. Here’s the film, here’s the thing you put on your tongue, whatever it is. And then they try to keep that brand loyalty alive the entire time that that patient’s coming in for treatment. I think you’re gonna find secondary illnesses here. I think anything that’s close to the lymph glands like that, I think you’re gonna find secondary illnesses. But the main thing I think you’re gonna find is a lot of criminal conduct. Good luck on it. Go after these cases hard. Punish ’em for what they’ve done.
Sara Papantonio: I certainly will.
Mike Papantonio: Thanks for joining me. That’s all for this week. But all these segments will be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. So make sure you’ve subscribed. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you stories every week that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em tell those stories or their political connections don’t allow for it. They’re too Democrat or they’re too Republican and all they can deliver is Democrat talking points or Republican talking points. That’s not what we do around here. We know it some people off. That’s what we do. We’ll see you next time.
